Page:Glitter (1926).pdf/89

. . . "but she's old enough to eat hay". . . "from Milwaukee or somewhere". . . "dance like a streak". . . "pretty hot". . . "try the strawberry blonde with Fat Hastings". . . "flask empty already". . . "fifteen minutes, by God, before anybody came to my rescue". ..

Presently Jock saw Cecily Graves. She was dancing with Dopey, and both of them looked silently unhappy. Cecily's dress was pale blue, with tiny rosebuds here and there upon it. The sort of dress a little girl might wear to dancing school. When they passed the stag-line—quite close, so that Dopey might send an optical SOS to such of his friends as might be there—the stag-line looked around and above and beyond them, vacantly, All except Jock. He cut in.

"Dizzy go, isn't it?"

"What did you say?"

"I said," translated Jock, "it's a gay party." He beamed down at her. "You don't speak American, do you, Cecily? I've noticed that before."

"I shall by the time I leave here," Cecily said. "I'll know a lot of things by the time I leave here that I didn't know when I came."

"For instance?"

"Oh—things."

"By the way," Jock said, more to keep talking than because he wanted to know. "I meant to ask you—where do you live?"

"East Orange, New Jersey. Right next door to Ronald—Dopey, as you call him."

"And right next town to my town," Jock said. Then, as their feet collided smartly, he added, "Oh, I'm sorry."

"It must be awful to be a man and have to apologize when you know very well it wasn't your fault."